Brandon Johnson, Chicago mayoral runoff candidate at a glance

• Age: 46 DOB
• Current job: Cook County commissioner, Chicago Teachers Union organizer
• Current neighborhood: Austin

Who is Brandon Johnson?

Brandon Johnson serves on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He represents the 1st District, which includes the West Side of Chicago and some western suburbs. Commissioners are elected to serve as the governing board and legislative body of the county. He lives in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side.

In the first round of mayoral balloting on Feb. 28, Johnson secured a place in the April 4 runoff, finishing in second place with 21.6% of the vote. Paul Vallas finished first, with 33% of the vote.

Johnson is an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. He’s also a union member, having taught at Jenner Academy in Cabrini-Green and then at Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side.

What is Brandon Johnson’s platform?

Johnson ran a progressive campaign that earned him the endorsement of United Working Families and the CTU. 

His campaign has focused on issues including public school funding, reliable transportation and affordable housing. 

“I mean, these are things that are not extreme or radical ideas. It’s what the families want in the city of Chicago,” he told the Sun-Times in the hours after he secured a spot in the runoff.

A central part of Johnson’s platform is his plan to bankroll social services in areas including public safety, schools, transportation, housing, health care and jobs. He estimates his tax proposals would generate $800 million in new review for those programs.

“Our city faces a housing crisis and raising property taxes would only exacerbate that crisis, leading to a death spiral for our city,” Johnson’s financial plan states.

Johnson’s plan to fight violent crime includes “training and promoting” 200 new CPD detectives, launching an audit to identify savings that start with streamlining the number of “non-sergeant” police supervisors, closing CPD’s Homan Square facility, erasing the “racist” gang database and ending the three-year, $33 million ShotSpotter contract.

He also wants to reopen 14 mental health centers and build a “comprehensive trauma network” at public schools most impacted by violence to provide social services” to student crime victims.

How can Brandon Johnson win the runoff?

As a relatively new face in Chicago’s political scene, Johnson needs to get to work, political strategist Delmarie Cobb told the Sun-Times.

“He has to really introduce himself. People didn’t know Lori [Lightfoot], and people didn’t know him. And they might be like, ‘Once burned, twice shot.’ They may think, ‘We did this once before with somebody. I don’t know that we should do that again.’ And they do know Vallas,” Cobb said. 

Johnson’s campaign manager, Jason Lee, believes Johnson can win by “consolidating the majority of the vote that wasn’t with Vallas” in both the Black and Hispanic communities and by “building on our strength in the Milwaukee Avenue corridor.”

Compiled by Katie Anthony from stories by Fran Spielman